Sunday, 23 April 2017

Examples of Crap I Waste My Money On: Bootsale Report 10!*

This week’s wander through
waves of other people’s unwanted consumer goods was slightly marred by me
having another fucking cold, old lawn
ornaments and dusty porcelain loses some of their sheen when you’re feeling
like utter crap - but it was self-inflicted suffering so I expect no sympathy,
I wouldn’t give it if it was you. Anyway the big news was…The Dirty Stall was
back! And this time I remembered to take a picture of (some of) it:

This is most of the action
figure section (there’s one more row or so), the rest of the stall
stretches to the right, a van’s worth and then at least this again but filled
with video games, including a box of Japanese SNES carts, bit weird. I would
have taken a lovely dramatic shot of the whole thing but I felt really self-conscious
and this was the amount of stall I could fit in while hiding behind the
stallholder’s van. I’m really behind this stall, for the third week in a row
it’s turned a good bootsale into a great one and every week he’s had new stock,
where does he get it from and more importantly, how does he get it so dirty in
the small amount of days he has it? Does he just live in a place where it does
nothing but rain topsoil and catshit? And if so (and in certain parts of Wales
that’s entirely possible) why does he leave his stock out in the open? Anyway
(again) here’s the haul:

Not especially impressive,
though this does cut out the four books and two bags filled with Crazy Bones
because I got indecisive about framing and shit, I get very uncertain when ill, Still the Edgar!Bug, She-Spawn and DragonFlyz figure (Fryte) made the trip
worthwhile, throw in a bunch of possibly racially offensive sharks, Bam Bam
Bigelow AND a Clefairy and it’s hard to grumble. If I always seem too happy and
pathetically chuffed in these posts, it’s cos I am – getting Corps figures for
50p each genuinely makes me pleased with life.

Soccer LCD Game Card!

£5 ($6.41)

Gakken made a fuckload of
handheld games, not all of
them looked lawsuit filingly close to Nintendo’s Game & Watch games but
some really, REALLY did, leading me to believe the only reason Nintendo didn’t sue their arses into
debtor’s prison was because they didn’t know about ‘em. They’re not super super
rare but finding one with box, insert and manual – even if the box has
seemingly been used to wash a floor with – that works, for a fiver, is still
something to just slightly brag about. Of course finding an actual Game &
Watch with box, insert and manual, that works, for a fiver would be even more
of a thing to brag about but, um… NEXT:

The Most Undesirable
X-Men Figure Toy Biz Made!

50p (64¢)

Meet Commcast. Who the hell
is Commcast? Meh, he was in Deadpool back when She-Hulk was Deadpool (y’know,
before Joe Kelly turned him into the character you all fawn over today?), he’s
a super-hacker, you know that ridiculous bit in Independence Day where Jeff
Goldblum interfaces with alien technology with an earth laptop? Commcast could
actually do that, which is pretty cool if he was ever used in any meaningful
way, he wasn’t, hell he can’t even be called Commcast anymore (because of that
other Comcast), he’s called Black Box now, so he sounds like a vagina too. Toy
Biz included some major nobodies in their line (Tusk, Quark, Kylun, Shadow
Dancer) but they were at least cool monster-y figures, and Morph may have been
dull but at least he was a dull figure of a genuinely interesting and
sympathetic character, Commcast sadly has few to no redeeming features (other
than sweet moon boots) and if I do see him discussed online it’s in the context
of ‘why?’. THAT is exactly why I bought him; you can always guarantee that I’ll
buy the daftest figures in the series if given the opportunity, their unloved
and mocked status makes me want to take them home and look after them, I don’t
see boring action figures chosen only to fill out a wave, I see little sad
puppies with only three legs.

Daft Books!

£1 ($1.28) for
all three

I was robbed.

I kid, I’d’ve paid a quid
for the Star Trek novelisation alone, because I want to read it but mostly
because I just love that poster, the perfect mix of sci-fi and gay pride. Just
in case you’re new to the internet, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is
balls-achingly slow, I’m hoping the book will be a bit better, if for no other
reason than it’s probably not going to spend 20 minutes panning around the USS
Enterprise, and it’s written by Star Trek creator and professional difficult
bastard Gene Roddenberry himself, so totally worth 33.3reoccurring pence. I
read the Rambo book on the way home, it’s as an informed and accurate portrayal
of non-white races as you’d expect from a children’s book about a walking
testosterone factory in a book written in the 1980s. The middle book I’m quite
excited about, it’s part of the Sega Power series where they made short
children’s novels out of games on the Mega Drive, this one’s based on Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, the
first in EA’s Strike series which, in case you were wondering, you should
totally go and play right now! I’m quite interested to see just what they’ve
come up with but I’m waiting until I have something really upmarket to eat –
fresh pasta with pesto and rocket or something – because it amuses me to read a
children’s book based on the video game sequel to a real war while noshing on
something that’s usually £35 in small, minimalist furnished, neon lit cafes
frequented mainly by women who pull their hair really tightly into pony tails,
wear tasteful silver jewellery and have never seen any of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, create a strawman? Mate I create straw restaurants staffed by and
selling only to straw men.

Tomy Wind-Up!

20p (26¢)

This is here so I can
impart some advice to all you imaginary readers who - as you’re imaginary - I
imagine hanging on my every word about how to be as adequate at bootsailing (or
yard sailing) as I am. Self-deprecation aside this is actually good advice:
always look in the toy car bins. I don’t buy toy cars very much at all (though
I did buy one today, it has Donald Duck in it, what was I gonna do?), in fact I
find boxes of toy cars to be fairly irritating; they get my hopes up and then
dash them with their battered paint and complete lack of being action figures
but they’re always worth glancing in. People who sell toy cars often end up
with other odds and ends and just chuck ‘em in there, I found a He-Man figure
in one once and today I found a Tomy Wind-Up bear, neither of which – you may
have guessed this – are cars. The best bit about this is that the toy car
sellers are almost guaranteed to give absolutely no fucks about the random
non-toy car thing you find and will sell it to you for bugger all, e.g.
charging 20p for a Tomy Wind-Up bear. I’m not saying waste your time digging
through them – unless you collect toy cars of course – just give ‘em a quick
look over, maybe stop, maybe don’t, the few times it pays off makes the many times
it doesn’t worthwhile.

7” Royal
Guardsman!

£2 ($2.56)

I’d like to thank this
bootsale for allowing me to show that I do in fact buy more than just action
figures and McDonald’s toys at these places. So here’s an action figure. The
Imperial Royal Guard are really fucking cool aren’t they? I mean they’re just
blokes wearing bed sheets and Cylon helmets but they do it so well. Anyway there’s a regular seller at Dunton Bootsale whose
stock is exclusively bootlegs in their most uncreative, on-the-nose form,
shoddy remoulds of six month old figures and Lego in the wrong colours with a
fraction of the articulation, the Guardsman here has a total of zero points. I
don’t normally buy anything because I find him (and his wife) to be somewhat
dishonest, they’re quite happy to let clueless mothers and grandmothers believe
they’re getting the real thing and that bugs me, especially when he’s charging
a few quid each for what amounts to half a penny’s worth of lies. I find that
morally questionable. But I am weak and the thought of owning a big-ass Royal
Guard figure that’s effectively an LJN Wrestling Superstar was too much for me,
god I bought a Star Trek book, a Star Wars figure and a Doctor Who DVD, I am an
amalgamation of the three biggest negative stereotype of geeks presented on
television, shiiiit, I felt dirty enough buying from the bootleg selling
wanker, now I feel dirtier still. Back to the LJN thing, this figure is 7
inches of solid rubber and I’m pretty sure it could kill a man.

Giant Pokémon
Card!

£1 ($1.28)

Hell yeah! It’s a little
bit creased but these early days giant promo cards aren’t that easy to come by
and certainly not for a pound a go. This one was, if memory serves, given out
to promote the 2nd Pokémon movie (which is unequivocally the best
Pokémon movie, even if it doesn’t have Mewtwo in it) and for me it’s one of THE Pokémon cards, I put it on the same
level of iconic as Ancient Mew and Base Set Charizard, just as they represent
the Black Star Promos and original era of Pokémon cards (Base Set, Jungle and
Fossil), Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos represents the giant Pokémon card.
Creases don’t matter when you’re that big in your field, ask Ron Jeremy. As
perspective isn’t really my friend in this picture, if you’re asking yourself
just how large these promo cards are, that is leaning on the Royal Guardsman,
and his head (well we assume they’re hes don’t we? Quite sexist really) is
roughly around Articuno’s butt.

Yeah I think that’ll do,
that Specials single is Do Nothing by the way which, being an obnoxious rock
snob who’s repulsive to the opposite sex, I bought mainly for the B-Side. They
took Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm and turned it into a metaphor for living in
Margret Thatcher’s Britain and took a song that in its original form sounded
like it was set in the 1910s and made it relatable to modern life. I wonder if
Dylan wrote a song called Teresa’s Lonely Island, or Donald’s Bombed Out
Nuclear Wasteland? Well this concluding paragraph will age fast, thanks for
reading.